Annalise Deal

Recently, the Bible study I am part of read Psalm 82—a passage familiar to many who are passionate about working for social justice. At first, I struggled to find much new meaning in the passage
in which God commands other powers and principalities who “show partiality to the wicked,” to instead “give justice to the weak” (v.2-3). In this song of Asaph, like many of the Old Testament
prophet texts, God admonishes rulers for being corrupt and concerned with gaining wealth and military power rather than with protecting His vulnerable chosen people. The first four verses in
particular are a clear and classic example of God’s preferential option for the poor.

While the Episcopal church, where I was raised, technically recognizes the communion of saints and the spiritual practice of venerating saints, I never felt like I had a special connection to any
saint growing up. I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything by not having a personal understanding of saints until last year, when God put it on my heart to seriously explore the richness
of the communion of saints. In studying the theologian Elizabeth Johnson, I was pointed to the Book of Wisdom for a portrayal of the communion of saints. Wisdom 7:27 says, “[Sophia] renews all
things; in every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets.” Through this verse, I came to understand that these friends of God and prophets are not just
those deceased and distant saints we read about, but also people whose holiness has had a profound impact on our own personal lives. However, figuring out how to relate to individuals in the
communion of saints, or find meaning in the “great cloud of witnesses,” proved a more difficult task.

I recently saw a photo on
social media of my high school youth pastor holding his 1-year-old daughter, whose face was lit up with the colorful glow of Christmas lights, captioned “Wonder at the parade of lights.” Aside
from how adorable the photo was, it also made me recall the importance of wonder, especially during the season of
Advent. Advent offers us time not only to sit in delighted wonder at Christmas lights, trees, and decorations, but also time to sit in wonder as we anticipate the mystery of the
Incarnation.

In the last couple months, allegations of sexual harassment and assault have dominated the news, from Hollywood to Washington. However, the recent accusations against U.S. Senate candidate Roy
Moore have led to some difference of opinion among some Christians. Judge Moore has been accused by several women of making sexual advances on them when they were teenagers in the 1970’s and he
was a 30-something local politician. Two of the women, Leigh Corfman and Beverly Nelson, have said that Moore sexually assaulted them. In the wake of these accusations, Alabama State Auditor Jim
Ziegler attempted to defend Moore by noting that he did not attempt or engage in sexual intercourse with the women, and by using the Bible to defend the ages of the women at the time of the
incidences. Ziegler told the Washington Examiner “Take the Bible…. [T]ake Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus.” This
argument is problematic from a Catholic perspective for two reasons: because it misrepresents the relationships between the Holy Family, and because it assumes nothing harmful about Moore’s
relationship with and assault of teenage girls.

Recently in a Bible study I attend, we had some time to express what we are thankful for, in the spirit of Thanksgiving. As I thought about the beautiful ways God has worked in my life this
semester, I kept coming back to one theme: the experience of being a woman. It sounds cheesy to say that I am thankful for sisterhood, or something like that, but really I am. This semester has
been one in which I have been blessed in incredible ways by the many strong, intelligent, thoughtful, and caring women in my life. Being in all-women spaces has at times reminded me of the
struggles we still face in the world, but more than that it has reminded me of the gift it is to be a woman and to know God in that unique context.

On Friday, October 20, thousands of Boston College students, faculty, and staff gathered to march in solidarity with black students. The rally was a response to instances of racism the previous
week, including the defacing of a Black Lives Matter sign to read “Black Lives don’t Matter,” and a Snapchat of a burnt steak and cheese sandwich with the caption “I like my steak and
cheese like I like my slaves.”

Recently, I went on a retreat on which the speaker focused all of his talks around 1 John 1, which makes the claim that “God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all” (v. 5). The concept
of God as Light has always been intriguing to me, but I came to understand it in four new ways that weekend.

This daily podcast from the British Jesuits offers guided prayer through one of the readings each day. Each episode begins with some kind of music--often a chant, hymn, or psalm. The second part
of the podcast offers an opportunity to pray and meditate on the reading through a series of repetitions and questions, that seem to loosely base themselves on the Lectio Divina model. At around
ten minutes long, the podcast is loosely designed to be listened to on a commute. It’s perfect for listening to while eating breakfast, walking to class, or as a quick moment of mindfulness in
the midst of a busy day.

This past summer, I had the pleasure of working at GLIDE, a United Methodist Church and non-profit foundation in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. Though GLIDE is in part a church,
more so it is a beloved community of people who seek to be radically inclusive and love unconditionally. Not everyone at GLIDE believes in God, but as a body, they live out the teachings of Jesus
in a uniquely action-oriented way. Built into their core values is the notion that as people committed to justice and inclusion, we all must “walk the talk.” This idea of walking the talk—of not
just holding beliefs and spiritual ideals but actually acting on them—challenged me to re-examine the way I live as a Christian.

I have long suspected that most Christians who say they want to love their enemies really only want to love some of their enemies. For most Christians, I think, there is a line where loving your
enemy stops feeling like a command worth listening to. For students at BC, I think that line is at loving Donald Trump, or loving members of ISIS. I understand that those are two extremely
different examples that don’t belong in the same group, but just for the sake of relating to a broader political, spectrum I will talk about both.

Like many of my fellow millennials, in the last several months I’ve become obsessed with Chance the Rappers newest album, Coloring Book. I’m not typically much of a rap person, but I am
a Theology major, so a friend of mine recommended the album because he thought I would be interested in the lyrical themes of the album. He was absolutely right. I have been fascinated by the way
that Chance combines more typical rap themes (“Drinking All Night”) with his deep Christian faith. Chance has discussed his faith extensively in interviews, and was very public about it at the
2017 Grammys as well, where performed segments of “How Great” and “All We Got” complete with a gospel choir, and began his acceptance speech for Best New Artist with this simple invocation “Glory
be to God.”

Recently I had the opportunity to go on a Kairos retreat, which was both wonderful and overwhelming. My leader that weekend helped me to connect the feeling of being overwhelmed in the Connors
Center, with a similar overwhelming feeling I had three months ago.

Earlier this month Father Greg Boyle, S.J., founder of Homeboy Industries and author of Tattoos on the Heart, spoke at BC. Of all of the wise things he said, it was one of his responses
during the Q&A that hit me the hardest. Someone asked him what role faith plays in the recovery and integration of gang members at Homeboy, and he responded first with another question: “what
is faith?”

On January 27, President Trump issued an executive order indefinitely banning refugees from Syria, and placing a 90-day suspension on immigrants entering the country from seven other
predominantly Muslim nations. Two days later, Boston College President Fr. William Leahy and other top university officials joined the ranks of higher education administrators who spoke out
against the ban. In an email sent out to the entire Boston College community, the administrators clearly stated their opposition:

Last spring on the Arrupe post-trip retreat, we received letters that we had written to ourselves 7 months before, on the fall pre-trip retreat. In the fall, one of the things I had written in my
letter was a list of all of my greatest fears at the time. In the spring, when I read that letter, every single one of the things I had feared had happened. And yet, when I read the letter back,
I felt this overwhelming peace. I remember sitting outside on a snowy ledge at the Connors Family Retreat center, thinking about fear, and feeling overwhelmed by the goodness of God, in the
realization that he is so much bigger than my fears.

Five days after his landmark peace treaty with the Colombian guerilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC, was rejected by popular vote, Colombian President Juan Manuel
Santos won the Nobel Peace Prize.

On October 2, Colombians voted against a peace treaty that would have ended the 50-year civil war between the Colombian government and the Marxist rebel group. Since the war began in 1964,
250,000 Colombians have been killed and thousands have been displaced in the conflict.

Santos and FARC leader Timoleon Jimenez signed the deal after almost four years of negotiations, only to have the deal rejected by Colombian voters a week later by a margin of 50.2 to 49.8
percent. According to the BBC, that’s a difference of less than 63,000 votes out of 13 million.

I’m not much of a planner, but living in South America has certainly made me realize how much of my life has been dependent on the aggressive planning and thorough organization we are so
accustomed to in the United States. Here, the world operates on a different system of time altogether, what sociologists call polychronic time. In Chile, time is not seen as strict and single
track. This is a world where class registration happens the night before classes begin, with all the students in one crazy room at the same time, and the administrators don’t even bat an eye.

As a theology major, I came to Chile knowing I wanted to study liberation theology, but living in a community where liberation theology permeates all things has made me realize it is much more
than something you study. Liberation theology is a lens for looking at the world; it is the fundamental belief that Jesus’ words “Blessed are the poor” (Luke 6:20) are uncompromisingly true. For
the past three months I have been studying at the Universidad Alberto Hurtado (UAH) in Santiago, Chile, which is named for Chile’s Jesuit Saint, Alberto Hurtado. Padre Hurtado was a champion of
the poor, and fought both legal and social battles to achieve greater justice for them. He firmly believed that there is no such thing as caridad sin justicia, love without
justice, and UAH is firmly rooted in this belief. Adapting to this sometimes extreme academic adherence to liberation theology has had a profound and sometimes challenging effect on my personal
faith. I have struggled to decide how seriously we must take the claims of Gustavo Gutierrez and others that God offers a preferential option for the poor. Is it just one reading of Scripture,
which is important but not central? Or is this the Gospel, that Jesus came to set captives free, bring sight to the blind, and rescue those who had suffered in this world?

From April 18-22 the BC Women’s Center put on another successful CARE Week—a week of programming focused around the problem of sexual violence, designed to educate, honor victims, and incite
change in our community. This year’s events included a special focus on intersectionality between sexual violence and other issues of oppression. Specifically, the week included events that
highlighted the ways race and sexual orientation relate to sexual violence. However, the main event of the week was Take Back the Night, an event hosted on many campuses across the country.

After receiving six Oscar nominations and not winning the first five, many were surprised that Spotlight took home the award for Best Picture. The film follows the team of Boston
Globe reporters who were the first to uncover the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. Despite many Bostonians’ anger over the portrayal of various people in the film,
I believe that this story was an important one to tell, and in the long run will actually do more good than harm for the Church.

Boston College students from various service and faith groups around campus came organized FAST week (Faith, Action, Solidarity Together) on March 15 thorough March 21. A sustainability event and
challenge hosted by the Puebla trip and a traditional Central American dinner and storytelling hosted by the Nicaragua trip were included among the many events.

Justice Antonin Scalia passed away suddenly on February 13, leaving behind a legacy of intellectual conservatism, and great zeal admired by liberal and conservative peers alike. Scalia was found
dead in his room at the luxurious Cibolo Creek Ranch in South Texas, where he had been on a hunting trip with friends. Local authorities pronounced him dead of “natural causes,” as he had a host
of chronic conditions known to his doctors in Washington. No autopsy was performed, per request of the Scalia family.

Shameless confession: I am obsessed with The Bachelor. In the past seven years since the good ole’ days of Jillian Harris and Jake Pavelka, I’ve watched countless relationships
form in the admittedly absurd conditions of the show, and then 90% of them breakup within a year of their season ending. I will admit it is an absurd premise that can hardly be considered reality
television: a single man or woman dating 25 people in hopes of finding a spouse. There is a lot of alcohol, a lot of helicopters, and a lot of making out. I won’t try to defend the show on moral
grounds (although I do believe there are always a few truly good people in the contestant pool) but the reason I keep coming back to watch is the same I think as most fans: The Bachelor
does have a strange way of bringing people together. In fact our collective fandom is so strong that we even have a hashtag: the beloved #BachelorNation.

Justice Antonin Scalia passed away suddenly on February 13, leaving behind a legacy of intellectual conservatism, and great zeal admired by liberal and conservative peers alike. Scalia was found
dead in his room at the luxurious Cibolo Creek Ranch in South Texas, where he had been on a hunting trip with friends. Local authorities pronounced him dead of “natural causes,” as he had a host
of chronic conditions known to his doctors in Washington. No autopsy was performed, per request of the Scalia family.